That story is now clearly broken. We are no longer on the brink of climate disruption—we have arrived. The planetary crisis is here, accelerating, and transforming the very conditions under which societies govern themselves. In this Era of Climate Disruption, the governance of anything—from health and housing to financial systems and migration—must reckon with a turbulent future of cascading, intensifying climate impacts.
A brief reality check
In 2024 the planet had warmed by ~1.55 °C above 1850–1900 (the baseline used by the IPCC). The evidence supports a high probability that the 2025–2030 period will average at or above 1.5 °C, with an outside chance of approaching 1.9°C. The Paris climate target of limiting heating to 1.5°C is effectively dead, with 80% of climate scientists in a recent survey believing at least 2.5°C of anthropogenic warming is now likely. This may be an underestimation. Research has shown that IPCC assessments tend to err on the side of methodological conservatism—consistently underestimating the pace and intensity of observed climate change and related impacts.
Does increasing planetary heat matter? The insurance industry thinks so: “At 3°C of warming, irreversible climate impacts lock in, rendering insurance unworkable, public intervention unaffordable, and financial stability unattainable”. Uninsurability means no financing for recovery. No financing destabilises the financial system and risks potentially ungovernable social and political disruption. There is nothing trivial about this future.
Of concern are not only rising temperatures and their cascading impacts, but the mounting risks of abrupt, irreversible tipping points. One example of increasing concern is emerging evidence that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation is slowing, threatening the climatic stability that underpins the mild summers and broader weather patterns of North Atlantic economies.
How challenging this climatic future becomes depends on two things; how fast the world decarbonizes and the speed with which we prepare for a much more dangerous and disruptive world.
Twenty years ago, the rallying cry was clear: leave fossil fuels in the ground. Activists, scientists, policymakers, and citizens poured energy into this story. And it has achieved a lot. The cost curve of clean energy is almost miraculous and global installation has surged. Renewables, smart grid and storage investment is predicted to reach $2.2 trillion in 2025, twice that of fossil fuel energy. The age of electrification has arrived.
Electricity demand, however, keeps rising, with data centres and AI computing, along with electric transport, heating and cooling, industrial electrification and population growth adding significant demand. The growth in clean energy has yet to catch up with this demand. In the meantime fossil fuel use remains stubborn, jumping to fill the gap, and annual global emissions are still edging upwards. A structural shift to clean energy is clearly visible, material and, ultimately, unstoppable. This is not yet the case for industrial manufacturing or agriculture, despite some progress on these.
Nevertheless, this challenging, complex and politically fraught transition is far too slow to prevent significant further heating. Thirty years of climate activism and international and domestic policy not yet reversed damaging emissions. This provides an unwelcome reality check, with catastrophic implications for many places, serious impacts on all and a major challenge to global governance systems.
The comforting hope of continuity—that life could go on much as before with some tweaks to technology and policy—is gone. As futurist Alex Steffen puts it, we live in a time of discontinuity where old analogies, tools, and mindsets no longer serve us. Yet, psychological and institutional habits are very hard to shake, especially when under pressure.
This is unsettling for governance practitioners, trained to seek incremental, orderly, consensus-based solutions. Climate disruption is speeding up. Disorder, non-linearity, and unpredictability are the new normal. We must face that.
The myth of orderly transition
Many governments still talk about “coordinated, sensible and orderly” climate transitions. It is not just aspirational, it is a core operating principle and ethical focus of good governance. Now it faces a deeply uncomfortable temporal reality. Had we seriously grappled with this transition three decades ago, it may have been possible. But we didn’t. The world will transition in response to the climate predicament, but it will be neither orderly nor well managed.
It will be far tougher than generally assumed for a second reason, the deep embeddedness of modern energy systems with their combustion-based energies and fossil-fuelled material production. Recent historical work has shown that new energies expand cumulatively ( are additive), not through clean substitution: coal never replaced wood, oil never replaced coal, and renewables mostly sit atop the old. Even with the pressing imperatives generated by the IPCC and the Paris Agreement, we are still likely underestimating what it means to break from a pattern that has shaped two centuries of industrial life.
This is concerning. The climate system is already delivering unpredictable, cascading shocks: deadly heat waves, megafires, catastrophic floods, stressed insurance markets, political instability. These ripple across sectors—finance, agriculture, housing, health, migration—making governance increasingly more difficult.
Even best-intentioned democratic processes, prioritising inclusion, consultation and consensus, often slow change when speed is needed. Delay is the new denial. Fossil fuel interests in particular have exploited this by demanding “more research” and “further dialogue,” delaying action for decades.
The result is we are headed into a disorderly and turbulent future. Some regions with climatic advantages, effective leadership, wealth, and innovation will adapt better than those less well positioned. Others will falter or collapse. Change will be uneven, contested, and spiky—neither smooth nor fair. This is an unjust and deeply unwelcome outcome in the Age of Consequences. But it may well describe the environment in which governance now must both theorise and function.
What this means for governance
First, we are clearly not dealing with just another ‘environmental issue’ (therefore enabling its quiet sidelining from the main events). Climate change now reshapes the conditions of governance itself. Three dimensions are worth considering.
1. Government Capacity Under Strain
Climate shocks undermine governments’ ability to deliver basic functions: keeping people safe, ensuring health and housing, maintaining infrastructure, stabilising economies. As disasters multiply, demands on the state escalate while fiscal capacity erodes. Governance is tested not just in environmental portfolios but across all areas.
2. Erosion of Trust
Repeated failures to protect communities, coupled with rising costs of adaptation and insurance, corrode public trust. In some cases, governments may be seen as illegitimate when they cannot keep people safe. This breeds political volatility, populism, and authoritarianism.
3. Fragmented Futures
Rather than a united global response, the future is likely to be fragmented. Change will come through conflict as well as cooperation. Some jurisdictions and communities will forge ahead—electrifying transport, decentralising energy, reforming food systems. Others will resist, delay, or collapse. Governance must be ready for unevenness.
In short, climate change is no longer a bounded policy problem. It is the increasingly disruptive foreground to governance in the 21st century, a wicked conundrum to continually navigate. We are living in what Wiseman calls the Long Emergency: an extended period where societies must continually adapt to escalating disruptions. This future need not be a global apocalypse, but nor will it be easy. It is shaping up to be an era of relentless turbulence, where governance will be continually tested and re-tested.
Rethinking governance in the Climate Era
So what does governance need to look like in this Climate Era? Here are three brief provocations:
The speed we collectively respond matters. Incrementalism is no longer fit for purpose. Governance must experiment with fast-moving, adaptive, and anticipatory tools. It must learn to coordinate on critical priorities, fail fast and rebuild quickly.
Justice is central but will not be enough. Governance must focus relentlessly on fairness, ensuring workers, vulnerable communities, and marginalised groups are not abandoned. But we must expect serious tensions here as it must also manage the difficult reality that speed may well be justice.
Perhaps most importantly, survival in the Climate Era requires community. Not in a naïve sense of universal unity, but in building the networks of trust, cooperation, and courage that help us endure. Working to connect to people and institutions willing to face reality and act together is essential. For regulators, lawyers, policy-makers and scholars, this means building new professional “tribes”: cross-disciplinary, transnational, practice-focused communities of governance fit for a hotter, wilder world. That is the spirit of this blog.
Dr Simon Kerr is Honorary Research Fellow in the Centre for the Study of the Inland, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne.